Michael Zimmerman, Senior Marketing Strategist at Baltimore-based consulting firm MarketPoint LLC, has been appointed to the Board of XPX Maryland, a local chapter of XPX Global, a community of trusted advisors to privately-held businesses and their owners. Read more
Laura Pasternak, founder and principal at Baltimore-based consulting firm MarketPoint LLC, has been appointed to serve on the advisory board for the UB Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation (CEI). The board of 16 veteran entrepreneurs, scholars, and mentors advises CEI on its student-based initiatives and ongoing projects and programming. Read more
If you’re a CMO, chew on this: Chances are, your direct reports grew up playing Super Mario Brothers. And I’m not talking about the Millennials trying desperately to land their first job in marketing. I’m talking about the Gen-X, 30-to-40-somethings who are chomping at the bit for your job, hoping you move on, or retire, or screw up.
Next year, we will mark the 30th anniversary of the term “guerilla marketing.” Yet, three decades after Levinson published his seminal book on the subject (Guerrilla Marketing, Houghton Mifflin), many business people – even those in marketing – are hard pressed to clearly explain what the term means, much less apply it to something as narrowly focused as community colleges. The concept is simple: If you’re not a BIG business, Madison Avenue doesn’t care about you. What’s more, the marketing practices they prescribe for their BIG business clients won’t work for you. If you want to be successful in an increasingly competitive marketplace, you’re going to have to stop fighting in an arena you can’t afford: traditional advertising. You’re going to have to fight your fight in the trenches. Unglamorously. And that may mean swallowing your pride.
Laura Pasternak, Principal of MarketPoint LLC, has been appointed to the Board of Trustees of the Lyric Foundation of Baltimore. The Lyric Board is responsible for long-range planning and management of the Patricia and Arthur Modell Performing Arts Center at the Lyric Opera House, and serves as trustees for the national historic theatre. Read more
We all misspeak. And sometimes, it’s comical. From Yogi Berra to George W. Bush, no one is immune to gaffes. But when the words we choose take on more meaning than we intended, it can be ironic, and maybe good for a few laughs, in which case, we call them malaprops.
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I admit it. I’m a Craigslist addict. It’s not that I expect to find anything on Craigslist that I actually need – that’s not the point. It’s the dream of finding something of great value at a ridiculously low price. Years ago, it was flea markets. I seldom found anything of value at the markets, but again, that wasn’t the point. I was addicted, and had been since childhood. When I was young, I would accompany my father on Saturday morning trips into town. Dad had a penchant for bargains. He once brought home an entire case of Dinty Moore Beef Stew, not because anyone in the house actually ate beef stew, but because it was a bargain, at less than ten cents per can. That’s how my father shopped, as if at a restaurant, reading every line from right to left, in search of the best deal.
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Baltimore-based consulting firm MarketPoint LLC released, today, the official results of the 2011 Survey of the Marketing Practices of Maryland Nonprofits’ Constituent Organizations. Read more